Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

People often don't understand the engine that drives corruption. Particularly in India, they assume government equals corruption, private companies equal efficiency. But government officials are not genetically programmed to be corrupt. Corruption is linked to power. If it is the corporations that are powerful, then they will be corrupt.

A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people, but those of multinational corporations.

The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage.

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

It’s about what happens when gullibility and fear meet greed and power.

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms. Give to any man a million a year, and add thereto the power of creating and disposing of places, at the expense of a country, and the liberties of that country are no longer secure. What is called the splendour of a throne is no other than the corruption of the state. It is made up of a band of parasites, living in luxurious indolence, out of the public taxes.

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts.

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.